


Beacon

by thecountessolivia



Category: London Spy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Separations, same relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 10:11:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6075372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fix-it retelling of the canon after Alex's disappearance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Always Safe

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sad I deleted the original version of this fic. It had lots of kudos and lovely comments, back when more than 3 people cared about A/D. Lesson to you kids: creative self-destruction is almost always ill-advised.

By 4AM the grey light began to seep in from the narrow courtyard. 

 _Almost time to go._  
  
Danny slept soundly.   
  
Having lied for hours in perfectly practiced stillness, Alex now stirred against him. His head buzzed steadily from lack of sleep - twelve days exactly since his insomnia had returned. When it arrived, he found he was relieved: he would find it useful in the long days ahead.  
  
For nearly eight months now, as long as he could hear Danny’s breath rise and fall against him, Alex had been able to slip with ease into the most astonishing black sleep.

How else had he changed in this room? It was here, eight months ago, that his synapses first sparked and burned with love. Here his lies to Danny ceased to stem from mistrust and began to thrive on necessity, born from the all-consuming fear that the warm naked body now slotted so tightly beside his own would be taken from him.

In its first permutation, the fear appeared long before he'd found Danny on Lambeth Bridge. It came as a sickly adrenaline pang that matched the low, droning hum of his sleeplessness and the calculated march of his reason.

He remembered.  
  
Eighteen months ago. They hand him the legacy code. He attempts questions. _Who'd started it? Where are they?_ He's given no names, no documentation, certainly no answers.  _Just get to it_. _Work._  they said.  _This needs your particular talents_. Their obfuscation, while thorough, is shoddy. It takes Alex precisely two passes before he comes to understand the nature and aim of what he's working on. For a while he keeps working, frightened. Two weeks after he meets Danny, he writes the first rootkit.

No moral quandary engulfed Alex. After Danny, he was faced with a trivial problem of predictive modelling and all-consuming fear. If the project was completed, put to use and kept secret, no one was be safe. If not, they'll kill him. But not before, he knew, not before they came for Danny.

Danny slept, lower lip trembling, caught in a dream. Curled on his side, he looked impossibly small. Alex held back from smoothing the soft inky mop of hair spilled against his chest. In eight months he'd had to learn almost every gesture of physical tenderness - but arranging the chaos of Danny's hair had always been innate.

He fought against a tidal wave of panic.  
  
_I don't know when I'll touch you again._

_I have to do this. A few more minutes. Commit him to memory. Then time to go._

He extracted himself from the bed, careful not to stir the soft sleeping limbs. Separated from Danny's warmth, he felt instantly alone and adrift. He shivered and began to count silently to himself, bringing about the resolve not to linger. He reached into a half opened dresser drawer and pulled out his neatly folded running gear.

While dressing, he comforted himself by seeking parallels and patterns. Last night, so alike to the first. Danny, drawing a warm bath, sourcing shots of something filthy from Sara’s well-stocked cupboard. Danny, quiet, but for softly spoken absolutes.   

“Who wants to stay?”  
“I do.”

On their first night together the fear had been different: a childish fear of being awkward, rejected, thought ugly and without skill. Danny, open, patient and guiding. Danny, blanketing and smothering the fear with whispered reassurances and touch.  
  
Both nights, watching Danny move against him in the dark, Alex felt himself come apart into unrecognisable pieces. Gasping, clutching desperately at the lithe naked body, he found his mind slipping into the toy mazes of his childhood. _I want to disappear inside you. I’ll live in you. Your body will be our hiding place._ Like his own awkwardness, the uncharacteristic and useless poetry of his thoughts embarrassed him afterwards.

 _Nonsense._  He thinks now. _They’ll kill you._

_Last night, of all nights, knowing nothing of what’s to come, you decided to tell me that story from ten years ago. Drugged out of your mind, you let strangers into your room and let them do what they please. I don’t understand. They could have hurt you. Infected you. But since then you’ve always been safe. Your body kept safe for you, for us. All you plead for is no more lies. Never to have secrets again._

_Danny, lies are all I have to keep you safe.  
  
_\----------------__

Six months before, fear seared with love, Alex sets to work. Map out the probabilities. Solve the puzzle of safety. Layer fallback systems. Danny’s love and trust the fixed variables of his scheme.  
  
To shape his models and plans, he keeps a small notebook. Over and over, in neat pencilled columns, he fills its sidelines with Danny’s words.  
  
_We deal with it. Together._  
  
A date jotted down for every day he is told he is loved. 

He ensures no changes to routine. His flat, watched for months as matter of course, becomes a bland show room. His passport idles conspicuously on a sideboard. His clean laptop is kept at Danny’s, ostensibly an indulgent, cash-bought gift. A locker at Liverpool St station. In it: currency, codes, instructions. Claire, her eyes reflecting his fear, memorizes its location, accepts the key.

Yesterday at breakfast, in Danny's flat, after months of coaxing and negotiations, Beacon make another contact. Their message:  
  
_Fine. Agreed. We'll leak it_.  
  
Curious more than anything, Alex attempts a discrete trace - where are they this time? A farm north of Reykjavik? Holed up on a container ship, on their own grid, sailing somewhere to the great manufacturing cities of northeast China?

Like him, Beacon are scared. They had to take a vote. Servers, finer points of encryption and, in time, public dissemination.

_We are ready. Here’s when and how._

They offer a small treat: Alex gets to choose the project name. He thinks briefly, his mind on prospect theory.  
  
_Tversky._  
  
They like it. It’s done. Which means it’s time to go.

His passport - the fake, useful one, stashed two months ago - he’ll collect later this morning during his routine Thames-side jog. Then a slip-slide through the city. No airports. The labyrinthine route he's devised is long: ferries and regional trains, obfuscation through obscurity. He’ll be safe. They’ll lose scent.  
  
_Navigation, Danny, I have no problem with._

Above all else, they can’t leave together.  
  
Yesterday morning, after Beacon vanish from his laptop, Alex brings a blank sheet of paper to the kitchen table. While Danny showers, he writes the letter in a heavy, trembling hand.  
  
_More lies. Forgive me, Danny. I don’t believe in soulmates. But you, more than anything you’ll want to believe a romantic gesture._

_Hang on, Danny, please. Soon, no more lies. The plan will hold._

_\----------------_  

Having dressed, Alex fumbled silently for his coat in the half light and found the notebook. From it, he retrieved the folded letter and placed it on the nightstand. Without looking back, he slipped from the bedroom and moved through the sleeping flat, the notebook sliding into the long sleeve of his running top. In approximately fifteen minutes it would reach the bottom of the Thames.

Five minutes later, in the street, his grey figure disappeared into the grey light of a London dawn.  
  
_Danny. I love you.  
  
I promise you’ll always be safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Alex is thinking about Amos Tversky. Tversky developed prospect theory, which describes the way people make choices when the probabilities of outcomes are unknown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory  
> \- More about rootkits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit


	2. The Letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Danny’s insecurities crowded insistently around him, constricting his chest with tears. _For years you’ve been nothing more than promiscuous, tweaked out little shit. Of course he’s gone._

“I mean, what the fuck?”  
  
Danny’s face had already crumpled into tears.

It must have been around eight in the morning and Sara was bustling about, making tea.

“You’ve totally misread this, Danny. He’s trying to be romantic. Weird romantic, but we’re talking about a bloke who shaves with a cut-throat and owns a thermos. I don’t get it, sweetie. Why would you be upset? This is a good thing.”

“He didn’t even wake me. He just left. Sara, I told him some things last night. Some things I did. Ten years ago.”

Sara scoffed affectionately and placed the mugs on the coffee table. Swaddled in his bathrobe, Danny had curled himself on sofa, knees drawn to his chest. He turned the letter over in his fingers, trying not to re-read it for the tenth time.

After last night’s tipsy confessional and the tears that followed, Danny had imaged an absolution, a new age by dawn. Instead, he met silence. While drifting off, clinging to Alex for assurance, Danny looked through the darkness and feared he was peering into some unfathomable well.

He thought he’d slept restlessly but when he woke up he couldn’t recall Alex slipping away. And then the letter. 

 

> Danny,
> 
> I thought we should have a holiday. A long weekend. I’ve booked a cottage near Orkney, in Shetland Islands. You’ll need to fly to Inverness. There will be a car. Your flight leaves today at 14:45PM. BA3031.
> 
> I needed to leave before you. I have to sort a few things out beforehand. I’ll meet you at...

Alex’s elegant hand in that favourite mechanical pencil of his. Alex’s direct, factual voice.

 

> ...Have Sara take you to Heathrow. Dress warmly, please. I love you.  
>    
>  A.

“You think he’s buggered off because you told him about being off your tit? Ten years ago? But he’s clearly been planning this for a while. He got plane tickets.”

Danny’s insecurities crowded insistently around him, constricting his chest with tears. _For years you’ve been nothing more than promiscuous, tweaked out little shit. And now he knows. Of course he’s gone._  
  
"It's not just... this isn't like him, Sara."

Sara was patting his knee.  
  
“Sweetie, remember when you first had him over? You said he left the next day and you heard nothing. So you went ‘oh, that’s that then’ and cried and cried. And then two days later he turns up. I answered the door, remember? It was six in the bloody morning. He’s standing there in his fucking suit, looking totally lovesick and...” Sara was sniggering so hard she was shaking “...and he’s brought you a bonsai tree!”

Danny managed a smile and pressed the letter to his chest.  
  
“Ben the Bonsai.”

“Yeah. And since then you can’t shake this freak show. He’s half moved in here for chrissakes. What’s wrong with his flat anyway?”

“Nothing. I don't think he likes spending time there. It’s not really his.”  
  
Sara nestled beside him, sipping her tea.

"His eyes never leave you, Danny. He won’t even speak to me or Pavel, just stands there and smiles awkwardly, unless you’re around. He’d probably flinch if anyone else tried to touch him. He’s not going anywhere. Besides -” she grinned, jabbing a finger in the direction of Danny’s bedroom “we hear him, you know. When you’ve got him in there. Good lord. What the fuck do you do to him? ”

Danny squirmed and made a face of mock outrage, slapping Sara’s wrist, but his heart was beating triumphant drums. _I do that. I do that. To the quiet, beautiful Alex._

He looked down to the tidy pencil writing and felt himself still smiling through a thin stream of tears.

“'Dress warmly’”.

“Yeah. It’s arse-cold in Scotland. You’re going to hike and fuck and drink whisky and it’s going be glorious.”

“But why are you supposed to take me to Heathrow? Why do I need a chaperone?”

“I have no idea. Maybe weird romantic also means like... weird protective? Like... he’s worried you’ll get lost?” 

“I’ve been on a plane before, Sara.”

“Shetland bloody Islands, well. That’s like the end of the world. Let’s Google those adorable ponies...” Sara pottered to the breakfast table to collect Danny’s laptop, his gift from Alex. She flicked her fingers over the keyboard, coaxing it to life.

“Um, is this thing knackered?”

Danny’s eyes drifted to the lifeless black screen. His heart fluttered with some vague sense of comprehension and began its drop into a deep well.

“I need to pack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sara is thinking of Shetland ponies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_pony


	3. Deep Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I realise you can't tell me everything. But please. Please. Just one thing. Will he be waiting?"

Whilst packing Danny allowed himself a spliff. Sara offered valium but he shook his head.  
  
At departures they hugged.

“Try to bring back some tasty booze. ‘Cause you’ve been nicking mine.”  
“Sara, he’s still not texted.”  
“Well he’s probably in the air now, right? You’ll see him soon enough. Have a good time.”

Danny watched fondly as she trundled off, unlit roll up dangling from her lips. At the gate, his nerves somewhat settled, he texted Scottie.  
  
>Told A about That Night. Now going off to Scotland. Strange days...  
  
No reply. He let it go. Part of him blamed Scottie for his confession.

At take off Danny pressed himself to the tiny window and looked for the Shard jutting out from the thick fog draped over the London skyline. _Like a sword from a lake_ , he thought, _or a futuristic lighthouse_. Lulled by the drone of the engines and residual numbness of weed, he slept and dreamt about Alex’s hands.

First came the memories, flicking past like slides in a magic lantern. Alex’s hands, collecting the shattered remains of his phone on Lambeth Bridge. First handshake, warm and broad. Panicked hands clutching into fists on his doorstep, trembling in his bedroom, finally soothed between his own. Graceful hands dancing at his throat to knot a tie. Time and time again, palms lifting to press and match his own.

Then he felt, distinctly as he slept, the familiar twining of long fingers in his hair. He could feel them slip from his scalp and over his face, soft palm over his stubble, cupping the line of his jaw. A thumb smoothing and parting his lips. Like a blind lover seeking recognition.

Turned on, he wanted more - but found himself instead on a vast grey beach. A dull paranoia began to pervade the dream. _Alex, please, I want to see your face_. Try as he might, his gaze couldn't break from the fingers now writing with big assured strokes in the rippled sand. He followed the hands in their scribing, trying desperately to decode the message. The marks multiplied, filling his vision, the hands dissolving into the script, fingers crumbling into sand, and disappearing into a grey nothing.

\---------------------- 

The arrivals hall at Inverness stretched out before him, long and deserted. Through the vast windows the desolation extended past the glass and laminate of the terminal, over the runway and into the water and dusk beyond. London had been grey but here the early evening sky was a uniform shade of indigo, like his ancient peacoat.

Danny shuffled groggily from the gate to the toilet and stared himself over in the mirror. Had he lost more weight? He touched the dark circles under his eyes. He began changing into another jumper, a favourite of Alex’s, when he remembered: he’d not checked his phone. Madness. Surely by now Alex must have landed, be somewhere nearby, must have called.

He fished about in his jean pocket. The screen lit up with the last message received. Not Alex. Not Scottie. Sara.

> They said theyll be back

It read like nonsense. Was there more? His thumb scrambled over the screen to find a tower of jagged blue strips with white text. He read them backwards.

> They said theyll be back  
> I thought you stopped dealing  
> WTF  
> Danny WTF  
> Why didn’t they ask where you were going?  
> They wanted to know what you took with you  
> Not cops???  
> I got stopped

He steadied himself against the sink. The first date stamp read: 15:15PM. Thirty minutes after his flight left Heathrow. Drugs? Can’t be. He’d cleared out his inventory six months ago, sold the last tiny bit of coke to some kids down in Brighton. The same weekend Alex had come down to join him. They gasped and laughed in the freezing sea and hurt their feet on the pebble beach.  
  
Besides, Sara said: “not cops”. Frantically he dialled her number.

Nothing. No fucking signal. He stormed out into the terminal, roaming aimlessly to find the bars that refused to appear. At the end of the empty hall, he caught sight of two vastly different figures. With an unmistakable sense of purpose they strode unmistakably towards him. 

Heart pounding, he broke into a swift stride away from them. He wanted to run but where to? He peered back and as they approached, he saw uniforms.  
  
Cops?  
  
With impossible, measured swiftness they grew ever nearer and Danny abandoned his aimless evasion. As if in a dream, he halted to find himself faced with a startling twosome dressed like caricature chauffeurs.

The vast black man with a lined face stood arm to arm with a tiny woman who seemed no more than a husk of bone and white skin, despite her apparent youth. Their uniforms matched perfectly: from their immaculate black brogues to the pins which held down their bright blue ties. The woman watched Danny with huge milky eyes.

The man boomed.  
  
“Daniel. Edward. Holt.”

Danny’s lower lip dropped and he nodded, though he’d not been asked a question.

“We have the car.”  
  
The man was grinning. There was an American twang to his voice.  
  
“From Alex? You have the car from Alex?”

The man didn’t answer. He reached into his absurd uniform and from a pack of playing cards retrieved an equally absurd business card. He extended it to Danny. 

> Paxton & Gray  
>  Transport Dept

“You’re joking. What the hell is this?”

“Follow us, please." The man was still grinning his pointless grin. “Your ride tonight will last four hours and thirty five minutes.”  
  
The stern, small woman was inscrutable.

He followed them through the terminal, all the while bashing helplessly at the numbers in his phone. Alex. Sara. Pavel. Scottie. Nothing. And why the fuck hadn’t he charged the thing? The battery was dwindling pathetically down to nothing.

In the parking lot they lead him to an unremarkable black estate car. The tiny husk-woman snagged Danny’s bag from his hands and dropped it in the boot. The American opened the back door.

“Please. Sit.”  
  
He did as he was told and slipped into the dimly lit backseat. At once he knew he wasn’t alone.

Beside him sat a slight, handsome woman in her middle years, with fine cheekbones and soft dark eyes and hair. Something about her modest, academic neatness and the familiarity in her worried glance let Danny’s intuition take its leap.

“I think I know...”

With regret, as if it hurt her to say it, she stopped him.  
  
“Danny, my name is Claire.”

————————————————————  
  
“Where is he?”

She had reached over to hug him and he fought against shoving her back, his instincts repulsed by her motherly ways.

“I’m so glad you’re here. Alex told you who I am? My goodness, he hadn’t shown me pictures but I suspected you’d be a sight for sore eyes.”

“Where is Alex? Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I promised Alex I’d meet you. He wanted you to spend as little time as possible by yourself.”

Danny replayed her answer in his head, agape at its odd phrasing. The car had already wound itself into some B road, snaking and disappearing into the indigo dusk. The ridiculous twosome in the front seat were silent, the vinyl rims of their caps gleaming in the rare passing streetlight.

“He asked you... What’s happened? Is he ok?”

“Danny, first things first. I’ll need to cover some basics with you. When we arrive we’ll have some documents for you...”

“What documents? Who the fuck is harassing my housemates? Am I gonna be arrested?”

Claire’s face, already lined with concern, dropped slightly and her eyes flicked to the rear view mirror.

“No, Danny. That’s why we’re here. Alex asked us to ensure nothing like that happens.”

Danny’s mind was thrashing against that blank wall of silence Alex had raised against him last night. He thought: I must be asking the wrong questions. He fell quiet. He needed a fag.

Long minutes passed and the dark roads drifted past. Claire peered out the window, thoughtful. “Danny, have you ever seen Alex truly upset?”

Heart jolted by the question, Danny stared ahead into the back of the seat. He offered no answer but thought bitterly: yeah, I have. And I did it. I made him sob. Devastated, childlike sobs.

Claire continued.  
“I haven’t myself. But I heard a story from Marcus, his supervisor. Alex mentioned him? Alex was so young when he came to UCL. We faculty were all protective of him, though he was already very much in control of himself. Anyway, Marcus told me: once, they were studying the predictive models behind a very famous chess match - or matches. Have you heard about them? They happened in the 90s. Gary Kasparov versus Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer.”

“You see, in 1996 Kasparov played six games against Deep Blue and won every one. A year later he played again and lost - the very last match. Marcus told me that Alex was distraught to the point of tears at Kasparov’s loss. He obsessed over it, analysed its causes. I remember I found it odd back then, that a boy with such natural ability and affinity for maths couldn’t bare the thought of Deep Blue, of a machine, outdoing a man’s ability to prospect an outcome.”

Danny stared into his lap, his mind viciously looping the image of Alex’s tears. Claire sighed.

“Danny, I’m so sorry I can’t give you all the answers. But I can tell you that I’m doing what he asked of me. And what he asked is right. For now.”

He was starting to plead.  
“Please. Please tell me when you last spoke to him.”

“I promise I’ll tell you soon. You know, when he first called me I asked him about you. I asked if he was happy. The wrong type of question to ask Alex, I realised afterwards, if you want simple answers.”

Danny looked to her and, despite himself, saw nothing but kindness. “But he did answer you.”

“He did. He thought about it and said...” Claire let out a bewildered, smiling scoff. “...‘He reads to me. And makes me breakfast.’ As if those things were improbable. Or miraculous.”

Danny was coming apart with desperation.

“Claire. I understand you can’t tell me everything. But please. Please. Just one thing. Wherever I’m going. Wherever you’re taking me. Will he be waiting?”

Claire took his hands into hers.  
  
“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Claire mentions Kasparov vs Deep Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov


	4. The Card Trick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What have you taken from us, Alistair?"

One hour after they would discover the collapse in routine, he finally reached the port.

He had run a steady and inconspicuous route along the Thames to Greenwich. There, he unearthed his cache and disappeared into the early waves of bleary-eyed commuters at New Cross. Then East Croydon, Ore, Lewes and, at last, Newhaven.

Once the soak of sweat evaporated from his running gear, he had grown desperately cold. Using money from the cache, he bought tea and warm clothes on the drab high street. While paying he caught a weary glimpse of himself in a shop mirror. For all the muscle he'd bound to his bones over the years he couldn't see past the insecure way his limbs hung from his frame, the parts of his stern face that were too wide, too big. Without Danny to hold and behold it, his body was a utility, bogged down with relentless unease.

Swaddled in a new grey parka and clutching his takeaway tea, he made his way to the ferry. It was early November and a salty Western wind was battering the port. On board, still shaking with cold, fear and sleeplessness, he found a seat by a window and calmed himself by replaying the probabilities.

By 9AM they would know his routine had crumbled.  
They would be generous, giving it perhaps an hour before reviewing the usual points of surveillance.  
Those failing to deliver, their priority would be his workstation and his flat, servers and the key loggers they assumed were in place, all wrung out for clues.

 _What have you taken from us, Alistair?_  
  
By early afternoon they would realise and start making their way to Danny's.

The ferry lumbered out into the misty Channel. Still rattling with unease, he distracted himself. Using tiny scissors from a sewing kit he took pleasure in the meticulous snipping of tags from his new hiking boots and socks, in the slow peeling of size labels from his thermals. He folded and tidied them from the shopping bags and into a rucksack. His sole worldly possessions.

 _But this is normal. This is acceptable._ He thought. _For all the money I have, I own little. I've hoarded clothes and books - but beyond that? And now, without him, I have memories for company._

A need for neatness, a despised first name, a paralysing shyness and impeccable visual memory - the four things Alex had gained from his mother. Unsure if she was raising a genius or a brain- damaged autistic, Frances had schooled him relentlessly in memorisation techniques, sat him before endless tests of visual recall. Alex could still remember the speed and accuracy with which he'd reproduced, aged six, the countless abstract patterns of the Benton Visual Retention Test.

He let himself drift into a sprawling palace of memory. Moving past guilt and worry, he unearthed a favourite fragment from his first few weeks with Danny. After making love, he would collapse into a novel, contented sleep but was soon wide awake again. When Danny first understood, he clambered behind him and drew Alex's heavier shoulders to rest against his chest. Over his heart he'd placed a small, tattered book.

"I'll read you to sleep..."

He felt Danny's voice flow past his ear, Danny's chin against his collarbone.  
  
"This little story... it's a bit dark but you'll love it. Labyrinths and kings..."

He frowned. Danny's voice, Danny's touch, Danny's fingers turning the pages against his chest. But the plot of the tale had escaped him.

He stirred and looked for the time. By now Claire would be arriving in Inverness.

When they'd met two months ago in the safe sprawl of the London Wetland Centre, she listened carefully and fearfully as he laid out the facts. She smiled kindly when he explained about Danny, stuttering out the alien phrase.   
  
"He's my - my partner."   
  
Though she'd agreed to help, he now recalled her words to the letter.

"Alex, when you were a student you flattered me when you asked for my help - though I knew you were too smart and earnest to do it consciously. Now you've come to me with this plan as if it were another assignment or puzzle. I can't see how you have any other choice. And I can't see how I could not help you. That being said, everything you tell me leads me to believe you might have a chance. But Alex, don't you worry about Danny?'

He'd known her nonsensical question was steering him into unchartered waters. When he was a student he had disdained the way she enjoyed pushing him over the leap stones of lateral thinking. Now, she was ensuring he'd give her wrong answer and he hated it.

"I do. This is for him."

"I don't mean whether you worry for Danny's safety. Lyapunov time, Alex. Uncertainty. Before Danny, you believed your life was a stable system, moving along a pre-determined path - until you reached the time of your wonderful, unusual meeting. Wasn't it unexpected, Alex? Doesn't the idea, the chaos of Danny give you doubts about the infallibility of your plan? "

In a tiny drawer of memory he'd filed away the worried smile she gave him when she'd said: "Acts of God."

\-------------------------

They stopped in pitch darkness and stepped out of the car. The drivers unleashed and lit their torches in comedy unison. Dazed and exhausted, Danny struggled to piece together his surroundings. Waves crashed nearby and a massive light flashed rhythmically overhead. They were lead through a door and he peered up to see walls stretching up high, past the sickly fluorescent strips mounted here and there. A lighthouse. Claire peered about and sauntered over to a basin.   
"Ah, thank goodness. A kettle."

The concrete interior, all but devoid of furnishing, was set with a plain table and chairs. Danny slumped onto one, shivering in his flimsy peacoat, and lit a cigarette. Claire set down the teas and accepted the blankets handed to her by the enormous chauffeur. She swaddled one over Danny's shoulders and, settling next to him, began.

"We'll need to stay here tonight. The next boat is in the morning. It will take you to Bergen."

"Where?"  
"Norway."  
"i'm going to Norway."

Claire's expression was once again pained and tender.  
"You are, Danny, yes."

Danny pulled the blanket tighter about him and found he was rocking. _I'm dreaming. I am still on the plane and I'm dreaming. Before long I'll wake. I'll be at the airport and I'll look about for his wide eyes and his shy smile. We'll make our way to our cottage and, by the fire, we'll plan the next morning's hike. I'll hold him and breathe his Penhaligon cologne, the innocent, old-fashioned one that makes my cock twitch._

Claire nudged her chair closer to his.  
"I'm sorry. I'll try to start from the beginning. Danny. Alex has stolen something very important. He intends to release it to the public. He'll have a bit of help, but..."

"Stolen. From his bank? Where he works?" Danny blurted, ashes falling from his shaking hand onto the blanket.  
"N-no... Danny, no. Not from a bank."  
"Code?"  
"Yes. Something like that. Something he's been working on for some time."

He was near tears again. Questions were pouring out of him and Claire struggled to keep up.   
"Is he in danger? Where is he? Why didn't he take me with him?"  
"Danny, I know it sounds harsh but to Alex, this was a simple case of risk reduction. As well as spreading out their resources."  
"...Their?"

Claire was silent. Was she was fighting with self-doubt? Was she in over her head? Danny felt sorry for her. He fretted about Sara and Pavel.

"Claire, will you hear from him? Soon?"  
"When he gets to safety...."

The massive American interrupted, bass thundering to the lighthouse rafters.  
"The probability of this is high."  
  
He'd been sat in a dark corner, erect and motionless, his creased face illuminated by some flimsy glow.

The last remnants of Danny's patience were fizzing out in a cauldron of fright and perplexity. "Bloody carnies" he thought angrily. Somehow he held the cartoon drivers responsible for all this. The fear was making him sick and he desperately wanted to chain smoke.

"Claire, at least tell me - who the fuck are this lot? What have they got to do with anything?" He was pointing to the corner.

"They've been retained, Danny. By Alex. For..."

"PERSONAL SECURITY." the interruption boomed again from the corner.

"This is... Leroy?" Claire tried to remember. "And this is..."   
She looked about for the tiny woman who seemed to have vanished as soon as they’d arrived. As if on cue, the smaller of the security personnel emerged from the shadows, transformed. Gone was the chauffeur garb. Her gaunt frame was clad in black silk trousers and immaculately tailored Mandarin jacket of gleaming blue. Danny's eyes swam over its embroidery, up to her small face. It was painted, lips dotted with crimson, short blonde wisps slicked back. An androgynous albino Geisha. She held a small briefcase.

As Claire rose to reboil the kettle, the painted creature dropped with disproportionate force onto the chair opposite Danny. In her hands materialised an oversized deck of cards, made bigger by her tiny white hands.

She fanned it out before Danny and nodded in invitation. He stared at her with bewilderment and disdain. Is that what we’re doing? We’re passing this night on dress up and card tricks? He retrieved a card, glanced at it to memorise it, then slid it back into the deck.

She shuffled the cards with great speed and theatrics, her hands a white blur. At last, she placed a single card face down before him - he picked it up to find it was his own. Already large, the card felt oddly fat and heavy between his fingers.

He turned it again and found he was holding his passport.

The painted face before him stretched into a long grin of small rounded teeth. Before he could speak, the creature snagged the booklet from his hands and, snapping her bony fingers beneath it, set it impossibly alight.

“Fuck, no, what!” he threw himself across the table after the tiny pyre when from the corner came a loud, twangy monotone. It stopped him.

“You will get another one.”

He looked back helplessly and found the light source of Leroy’s face came from the screen he’d been cradling in his enormous hand. Without moving his stare from it, the American spoke again.

“Visitors. Five minutes.”  
  
The tiny woman collected her cards, rose and cracked the bones in her neck. Lifting her briefcase, she moved for the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Frances subjects Alex to the Benton Visual Retention Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benton_Visual_Retention_Test  
> \- Danny reads this story to Alex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Kings_and_the_Two_Labyrinths - Claire mentions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_time  
> \- Alex's cologne http://www.penhaligons.com/endymion-eau-de-cologne/ . Inspired by a fellow LS fan, the cologne's also makes me think of Alex's insomnia - and this  
> painting by Watts: http://imageweb- cdn.magnoliasoft.net/bridgeman/supersize/maa322996.jpg


	5. Heart of Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three words, echoing back from Lambeth Bridge, braiding back together the unravelled pieces of his heart. 
> 
> "Are you OK?"

 

"Inside!" the American bellowed.

Danny slid down against the door which the wind had slammed shut behind him.  
  
Overhead, the vast white light swept by steadily, a peepshow exposing the carnage in the darkness ahead.

He was choking with panic.  
  
"Oh. God."

\----------------------------

With each pass of the light, he counted. One. Two. Three. Three human-shaped heaps laid scattered close by, unmoving. Three staring faces sliced apart with rivers of red. Torsos as if run through an unhinged, criss-crossing saw blade, gore seeping out of split bellies. Above them, hovering, the painted Kabuki mask of her face. With arms outstretched, the Magician stood in the midst of her deed, small and perfectly still, long bloodied knives held with great ceremony. Her eyes were on Danny.

The American was kneeling. Why was he laying down a handkerchief? It came to Danny: he didn't want to muddy his knee. His massive hands were reaching into the pockets of the carved up human lumps, pulling out guns.

"90 percent confidence!" he now thundered over the wind and the waves to his partner.  
  
"What... confidence?" Danny was rasping.

The man's vast face turned to him, creased in a grin-grimace, as if it pained him to speak plainly.   
  
"Boy. Look now. They came here to get you. Understand? Get. Inside. Now."

How many minutes since the drivers had stepped out of the lighthouse? He had stood inside, frozen, listening, until through the wind came the gargled screams. When they fell silent he rushed for the door, Claire grabbing after him.

With obscene strength, torch held between her teeth, the Magician now began dragging the first body away. She took broad backward strides through the flicking eye of the lighthouse and towards the sound of the waves.

As if in a dream, Danny saw himself move mechanically towards her. He watched the blank painted face as his hands reached down to pick up the corpse's ankles.

"Ey. Ey!!!" the American hollered after them - but the small woman bared her teeth at him as if in a silent hiss.

They moved together in a heavy rhythm. In the thin beam of her flashlight he soon saw the cliff's ragged edge. Eyes fixed on each other, they heaved the dead weight into the roaring blackness below.

\----------------------------

Claire was pale.  
"Will there be more?"  
"Until tomorrow? Unlikely. He leaves as planned."   
  
\----------------------------  
  


The dawn hadn't broken when they reached the port. By then Danny's mind was a blank sheet of numbness. They waited.

It was as they had promised. He had money and essentials, new documents, an address to go to in Bergen. He had no phone.

"Not yet. Danny. When you get there, Alex promised. More importantly it won't be long until you have some company again. Remember: straight to this address. You'll be in good hands."

He looked back at the drivers, now back in their immaculate black suits.  
  
"They're not coming?"  
"No, I don't think so."  
"Limited resources." came the booming twang "Other business."

Before he boarded the ferry, Claire hugged him so tightly that his numbness nearly cracked into weeping.  
  
"Claire. And you?"  
"Don't you worry for a moment. When you finally see him, give him all my love."

As he made his way on board, Danny felt The Magician's vast milky eyes follow his every step.  
  
\----------------------------  
  
Fighting nausea and attempting to light one of his few remaining fags, he tried to pace the wind-battered deck. Within half an hour he found his way to the toilet and, checking he was alone, huddled in a stall.  
  
He clutched at fistfuls of hair. The wooly otherworldliness that had slowly cocooned him since last night was coming undone. Trying to stem the inevitable, he flung a fist against the stall.

"Stop it. You fucking pervert!"  
  
The gory sideshow on the Scottish shore. The fearful void of Alex's absence.

Sara had been taking online psychology courses. "It's, like, a conditioned stress response" she once told him "get hurt, go get laid."  
  
After his father bashed him into the radiator one too many times, after he'd come home time and again to find it empty and the fridge a gaping hole, he went looking for bliss in flimsy hook-ups.

Now he wanted to wank. Eyes clenched shut, head clutched in one hand, he tumbled into darkness, over memories of pasty tweakers, of Rich's sweaty, glazed-eyed party boys, their bottoms slick with lube, of rushed gruntings of married men with hands on his throat. Staggering over these rubbish heaps in search of Alex, Alex, Alex.

Alex's muscled limbs sprawled long and hot beneath him, Alex raised on his elbows, lips wet and parted, flushed and peering down through half-mast eyes at Danny straddled over him. Danny stroking their cocks in his hand, smothering them to their abdomens, the innocence of Alex's soft gasping mouth straining for him. Slinking down, Alex's fingers in his hair, Danny's lips locking and slipping down over his cock, the sweet electric spurts lashing and coating the back of his throat to the music of Alex's moans.

He came quickly and felt no better.

\----------------------------

Bergen looms ahead like a picturesque dream of lights, sailboats and snow-flecked clifftops. Had daylight ever broken?

He disembarks, reaches the address he'd been given. An obscure flat above a shop in a residential part of town, not unlike his own in London, but populated with hush-spoken pale kids with laptops, perfect English tinged with soft Scandinavian accents.

They know his name but say little. We have to move you. It's OK. There's been a setback. But it's OK. We have other places.

Days pass and each morning they move again, zigzagging through the country. They try to make sure he eats, nudge him to change his clothes. Once, put on the back of someone's motorbike to the next sleepover, he sees the Northern Lights.

"Where's Alex? When can I speak to him?"

His companions struggle to understand, as if they only knew fragments.  
  
"Oslo. We have to get you to Oslo."

Then, one day, Oslo, a new flat, a new crew. This time, they stay. Among his new companions, a man, busily buzzing between them, set apart from the rest.

A breezy smile, dreamily handsome. A blond buzzcut and tan out of place among the serious pale faces about him. An English schoolboy's handshake greets Danny. An accent like Alex's, but untouched by timidity.

"Daniel, mate. So good to finally meet you. Joe."

"Please. Can you tell me anything? Is Alex..."  
  
"Gotta say, it was all off to a bit of a rough start! Have you done that hotfix yet..?"

He was speaking to Danny in spurts, carrying on other lines of enquiry with the gathered crew.

"Rough. How? I want to talk to him."  
  
"Look mate, he's making progress, but his first safe house was fucked with. We're still trying to figure out what went down. Don't worry - of course he had a backup. It's all..." Joe was laughing "so calculated. Always has been with Ali-with Alex... well, can you roll it back?"  
  
He was peering into someone's screen, pointing.

Joe's arm now swung about Danny's shoulders, his attention still flitting.  
  
"Danny. Yes. Go ahead and talk to him. Have we got him? Yep? No secure VOIP though?"  
  
He was being handed a laptop.  
  
"Right, sorry Danny, for now you're just gonna have to type, OK?"  
  
He was detaching power leads from the machine and shoving it into Danny's hands.

"Here. Ah, bless, you're shaking. We'll let you have some privacy."  
  
Joe was ushering him into the next room.  
  
\-----------------------------------

They left him. Clutching the laptop, he sat alone in the alien stillness, the only sound Joe nattering from the room next door.

On the screen, a small empty square, black, layered on top of windows of tangled code.  
  
Long seconds of nothing. Then, from the blackness, a single word.

> Danny.

Then, three words, echoing back from Lambeth Bridge, braiding back together the unravelled pieces of his heart.  
  
> Are you OK?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Magician, Danny's strange and bloody protector, is a transformed version of the performer we meet briefly in episode 4. The American we know from episode 2.


	6. Acts of God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where had they gone that night? He was drunk, and drunk on self-loathing, his brain a vicious spindle of the same relentless thought.  
> "I don't want you to stay with me just because I'm your first. You should see other people. You should."

Every time they begin the same, two questions echoing back through the black void of the screen.

> Safe?  
> Yes.  
> Warm?  
> Yes.

Sometimes they have five minutes, sometimes thirty. Joe thrusts laptops into Danny's hands at strange hours, wakes him in the night. Seeking warmth, confined to words, they use them to paint fragments and memories of home.

> That walk  
> Ten kinds of mud.  
> Where were we going? I still can't tie my own tie btw  
> Were we drunk?  
> I saw the Northern lights  
> I know, I know. But I could burn water.  
> I miss you.  
> So much.

In the corner of the spare room, the Oslo crew make a nest for Danny: an old futon, some books. He asks for coloured pencils and sketchbooks. There's usually between four and five of them, all young and serious. Crowded with their laptops in the front room they work silently for long hours, Joe sometimes buzzing among them. They watch Danny from a distance with something like fascination.

In the mornings, he makes them tea then curls in a beanbag, sketching their concentrated faces. He draws and colours in the bird tattoos of the woman who sometimes works among them. Noticing, they make her ambassador.

"Hi."  
"Hi. I go by Micah. You worked with your partner, with Alex?"  
"No. He's much smarter than me."  
"What's he like?" Her spectacled eyes scan him, gleaming.  
"He's kind."  
She frowns and chews lightly at her painted red lips, matching nails clicking. She's baffled by the adjective.  
"What do you do back in London?"  
  
He looks at his hands with shame, thinking back to his shit warehouse job, now likely long lost. He misses his notebooks, hidden under his mattress like drugs.

"I write."

He waits for her to smirk. Instead, she nods and joins her companions. She confers briefly then returns to sit beside him.  
"We scan a lot of documents. Government stuff. We translate some into English before we put them in the public domain. But we're not native speakers. Can you help us? Proof for us?"

When she gets up again, he spots another tattoo and recognises the quote. "Alex loves that book."

The work helps him pass the long hours without Alex. In the evenings, some of the crew stay behind, making themselves comfortable amongst their kit and their servers, on beanbags and guest beds, chatting over schnapps and take away. He talks books with Micah. She teaches him Italian.

He asks them about Joe, curious about his absence from these gatherings. They are silent and look at each other.

It's been two weeks since he's arrived.

> Alex  
> I don't know how to say it  
> You know him from uni, right?  
> I've been getting to know the kids here. They're lovely to me  
> But I just have this hunch

> Danny

> Yes love?

> I love you.

Then blackness.

\------------------------

The crew were silent. Only Joe's voice roared hoarsely above them. He was storming from laptop to laptop.

"What the fuck? What do you mean nothing? They were waiting. Do you know how long it's taken Beacon to set this up? Fucking goose chase across continents."

"Three days. Where the fuck is he? And you - a fucking lovesick puppy, hanging about -" Two fingers were jabbing at Danny's temple and he was swatting them away.

"You're wasting our time, his time. This would have been over three weeks ago if he hadn't dragged you into this. You really don't get it, do you? He wasn't just going to leak their precious schemes. Before he buggered off, he crippled them beyond all comprehension. OK? Unless they find him all they have to play with is two million lines of junk code. He's well and truly fucked."

Micah's eyes were on Danny. Joe's fingers now pointed at her.

"Keep trying. But for all we know he's been dragged back to their tower of eternal fucking darkness and bricked up in a wall."

\-------------------  
The next morning he was woken up by a gentle shake of his shoulder. Micah's face hovered above.  
"Hey."

She pressed a scribbled post-it into his hand, squeezed it shut.  
"2 o'clock today. Don't tell anyone and be careful. You'll be helping. I promise."

\--------------------

Leaving the flat he met Joe breezing up the stairs, arms weighed down with files. The boyish smile was back and melting his face.

"Hey. Danny. I just wanted to say sorry about yesterday. Been meaning to say this, but you have been so good for Alex - truly. Whatever happened now, it sort of seemed like he was doing all this for you. You were his number one guy."

Danny was looking over the soft handsome features, seeking something. Joe's hand wrestled from the paper pile and dropped onto Danny's shoulder.

"You know, he was so shy at uni. So young. Such a big virgin - we were nice about it, of course. I should have guessed he'd eventually apply his mad mental discipline to that body of his. Anyway. It was really good of you."

"What."  
"To let him experiment.'

A force was dragging on Danny, gravity amplified. He remembered his heart, back in Vauxhall, before Inverness, taking its vault into a well. He was reaching the bottom.

"Oh mate, I'm sorry. You didn't know? Really, don't worry - it was a one off. When he dragged me to London to plan all this. Look - just a blowjob, OK? He was funny about it anyway, after. He said 'I was supposed to' - like he'd been told to get laid. Weirdo."

He dropped a weak slap between Danny's shoulders, scurried up the stairs and disappeared.  
  
\--------------------------

Where had they gone that night? He was drunk, and drunk on self-loathing, his brain a vicious spindle of the same relentless thought.

"I don't want you to stay with me just because I'm your first. You should see other people. You should."

Panic and thick glassy tears flooding Alex's wide eyes. "I don't want to."

Too late for his arms to catch him before they spilled. "I don't need to."

It was always too late.  
  
\--------------------------

He'd thrown up the hood of his new winter coat against snow and recognition and moved mechanically through the streets. Light was already draining from the day.

He'd reached the small residential block with minutes to spare and turned the dials on the keysafe.

He made his way up the drab concrete stairwell to the first floor. His thoughts were humming with blankness, as when he'd said goodbye to Claire those weeks ago.

He turned the key.

A short empty corridor of white walls and plain laminate tiles led past a bathroom and a small kitchenette to the single bedroom.

Much later, he found he could recall it, in its first form, with exacting clarity. The loneliest room he'd ever been in.

To the right, a plain bed with cheap cotton sheets. Blank white walls, touched with damp, a gray woven rug over gray tiles. Ahead, a window with a canvas roller blind half down, letting in the sparse winter light. In front, a table with notepad and pens, with folding metal legs. Before it, a single folding metal chair holding the single exhausted figure of a man with his head on his folded arms.

A face lifting slowly to peer over a shoulder.

By then, he remembered, he was already sobbing.

\-----------------------------------------

He caught him as he crumpled and pulled him to the edge of the bed. Beyond everything else he needed to feel that slight weight in his lap.

Arms had encircled his tired head. He breathed into the darkness, into that beating heart, the scent of his tears melting into Danny's coat. Disappearing.

There was nothing else in the world.  
  
\-----------------------------------------

"You're lighter."  
"Your hair."  
"Have you been sleeping?"  
"You're so cold."  
"I'm so sorry."  
"No."  
"I wanted so much to tell you. Everything. The night I left."  
"Alex."  
"I need to get you away from here. I'll take you myself. You'll be safe. Safer than here."  
"Alex."  
"And then I'll go."  
"Alex."  
"How could you want me, now, after. How could you ever want me again?"  
"We'll fix it. Everything. Together."

\------------------------

When the front door creaked open he scrambled from the bed to his feet, pulling Danny up beside him, away from the window.

"Alex, God, thank fuck." 

Joe's face was peering at them through the grey twilight.

"Hey. Look - I'm sorry. I really needed to tell you as soon as I could. There's some crap news from London. They can't find him - Marcus. It's been a week. I'm trying to get some details. And you" he was nodding at Danny " Your little friend - the frizzy haired one from the flat. She's been tossed to the pigs. We're gonna need..."

"How do you know this?" Alex stopped him. He was looking away, scanning the window.   
"Hmm?"  
"Who told you this?"

In the gloom of the bedroom Joe's blonde head was sunny. He leaned into the doorframe and slid his hands into his coat pockets. He looked sentimental.

"You two. So lovely. Reunited at last. Of course, what you lack so completely is poignancy. It's not terribly interesting, is it, a lifetime of clandestine happiness? You've got this amazing chance. Imagine the headlines. If only you could try being more tragic."

As if to loosen them, he shrugged his shoulders against the doorframe, and drew a gun.

'Alistair, mate, I'm sorry. This little woodland creature you're so keen on is pretty disposable but you - you are so, so valuable. They really would do anything to get you back.'

The next seconds split into still frames.  
  
He can't move. He hears metal clang and skid across laminate, into darkness.

He can't see. What is it? Where had Danny found it? A pen, a pencil? At the end of the unlit corridor something is jutting from Joe's gargling neck, drilling out spurts of blood. Danny's smallness had flung his weight through the doorframe and into the corridor, dull thud of skull smashing into floor. The same small body now scrambling over the ribcage, knees pinning, Joe's limbs thrashing beneath - then stillness.

Danny staggering up and through the door, mouth wide with choked sobs. His arms outstretched, dark red.

"Alex. Oh Christ."  
He hears himself mouthing something - what?

"What?  
Alex.  
What have I done.  
I love you.  
He's not moving.  
Are we fucked?  
Please say something. "

"Danny."  
  
He can't shape his tongue around the words. Why this? Who had said it?

"What what, please, what! Talk to me. Please."

"Acts of God."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Micah's tattoo quote, which Danny remarks on, is from "Dune". Micah herself is a tribute to a friend.


	7. The Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Rather, accept it for what it is: a practical device, a layer of authenticity."

After he finished helping Danny scrub the blood from his hands, he threw up.

Danny held his shoulders.  
"Alex. We have to leave here. For a bit. Please."  
"He told them. He must have already told them. Everything. I don't know how long we have. I don't know anything now." he was gasping for breath, clutching at his knees.

They staggered out into the night, through the snow, into a nearby a cafe. In a booth, they sat opposite, eyes scanning over each other's pallor and fear.

When they dragged the body into the bathtub Danny had thought numbly back to Scotland: the darkness, the sea, the light, the blood.

Now, he was fumbling through his wallet with shaking hands.  
"Alex. They only gave me this. But you - you must have a number. Some way of contacting them."

Alex stared down at the cream coloured rectangle, the sparse blue print.  
"I don't think they can... How?"  
"Please. Try. How else will we know?"

Through the cafe window, he watched Alex pace under the street light outside. How traceable was the call to England? Did it even matter now?

He returned and in his eyes Danny recognised incredulity. He was nodding, his small nods of disguised excitement.  
"They will. Back here. Tomorrow night."  
"Did they say anything else?"

Alex was wringing his hands. Danny watched his brow knit, as it always did when he was picking apart a puzzle.

That night, on the bed of the small grim flat, they held each other tightly through the fear, listening for footsteps on the stairs during the long silent hours.

The next evening, in the cafe, they waited. Danny chain smoking, shuttling between the outside, the booth and the counter to fetch endless tea.

On his fourth round he returned and found Alex faced with a man in a camel coloured coat.

"Danny. How could you have done this to me?"

\-------------------------

Danny pressed his cheeks with tearful kisses. "You. You? How?"

Scottie cradled him indulgently before setting him down next to Alex. Sitting back down, he fixed them with a heavy stare, fingers drumming the table.

He looked to Danny with a fretful scowl.  
"Over the years I never expected you to pay much mind so I'll forgive any present sense of wonder. And it certainly wouldn't have been the first time you'd not returned my calls - especially whilst in a besotted state."

He leaned forward, hands clasped, two fingers pointed at Danny's heart.  
"But Danny. Try to imagine my fear when in the last few days it was brought to my attention that approximately seven months ago a booking had been made - for a Daniel Edward Holt. Small job, new client. I'd blame myself but we're busy with, frankly, more involved matters. Imagine, further, my horror when I realised the service dates correlated with your last little message. Strange days indeed. Danny. For all the little cruelties you've dealt me over the years, this one takes the cake."

Danny was clutching at Scottie's hands.  
"Scottie. The body. Sara... and Alex's tutor... and the crew here..."

"Yes, yes. But for you - " Scottie turned to Alex "It's all as you promised me, isn't it? You haven't hurt Danny. More or less. Kept the monsters at bay while shining light on their schemes. For a while anyway. Your friends aside, there's still the matter of bloody murder and being pursued. When is it all going to end? Tell me, Alex. How does your plan of meticulous control keep the chaos from spreading even further, beyond the safety of the two of you?"

Alex was silent, eyes downcast to his hands.

"My employees like riddles and games, but I'll try to speak plainly. To put an end to all this, something has to give. Alex, you ought to know that at some point only a few workable outcomes remain. I'm afraid you two are going to have to become significantly less precious to the dark forces of this world."

He looked at his watch.  
"We might as well go. She works fast."

Snow was falling thickly against the street lights and they realised he was leading them back to the flat. His umbrella had spread over their three heads.

Two black cars idled at the curb near the block's entrance, where Scottie paused.

"Danny, there's something I need you to understand. I do know you so well. But please. Do not see this as my idea of petty, theatrical revenge. Rather, accept it for what it is: a practical device, a layer of authenticity. A sprinkling-on of elements from your less than innocent past. Besides -" Scottie leaned in for a whisper "It was her idea. She couldn't resist. She'd never admit it but she's a huge fan of your work."

They were at the foot of the stairwell. Scottie smiled, nodding up to the dimly lit landing. "Ah! There."

She stood in her usual inscrutable stillness, dark coat draped over to cover her hands, the single bulb above illuminating her immaculate suit and tie of darkest blue. Her gaunt white face was unpainted and the cropped blond wisps of her hair glistened in the light, slicked back to her skull. They ascended to meet her.

"Here's Alex, the other one. Aren't they lovely together? Aren't we going to miss them?"  
She scanned them silently with her opaque eyes and remained where she was as they filed past, reaching the door of the flat.

Scottie's gloved hand rested against it. He spoke in a hush.  
"Needless to say, we will want you to be thorough - dare I say messy? Don't feel obliged, but please, do at least touch everything. Your DNA in all its forms is very much appreciated. Danny. Her gift to you. What do you think?"

Four steps took them through the door and to the end of the corridor, scrubbed of the blood to a pristine whiteness.

She had draped the plain window and sheathed the bed in black. The walls she'd canvassed in a mosaic of ordinary mirrors - they glimmered endlessly, reflecting the ribbons of small lights she'd woven across the ceiling like stars.

On the table, a display: tidy bundles of white rope, long braids, belts and cuffs of leather laid out in perfect rows. Beneath, moulded stainless steel shapes, thin gray tubes with labels peeled to match the pristine surgical showcase of her shiny new toy shop.

Danny's eyes sought Alex and found him blushing. His dark heart was pounding.

Scottie nodded, hand on the door.  
"Seems it'll do. Have fun you two. Afraid we can only spare an hour."

\-----------------------

They shrugged off their coats.

Palms pressing, they faced each other beneath the canopy of lights, reflected to infinity in the mirrors she'd hung.

Years later, they couldn't recall. Had they whispered it or thought it?  
  
"This is where we die."

\------------------------  
  
They left her to finish her tricks.

Windscreen wipers slashing at snow, the cars were making their way out of the Oslo suburbs and into the darkness beyond. Huddled in the corner of a backseat, they gave in to their exhaustion.

In the front, Scottie was scanning the road ahead.

"Some plan, wasn't it? Leaving us to mop up like that. Strange though. For those of us who will now remain the outcome will be the same. Your maths and models aside, I'm sure you can think of a more poetical reason as to why you were always meant to succeed against their systems of oppression."

He turned to seek his answer and found them twined about each other, asleep. He thought how very much he'd miss his young friend.  
  
\------------------------

**Epilogue**

Christmas had come and gone, the new year unfurled.

The day after she got the call telling her where to find Marcus, she made her way to a shared flat in Vauxhall. There, she checked in on a rattled and furious young woman who, after a brief exchange, deluged her with swearing and slammed the door. A moment later, she opened it again and into Claire's hands thrust a small bonsai tree.

Over the subsequent days she began scanning her phone, looking through the tabloids. She had a hunch.

At the request of their families, the press were good enough to withhold the names of the two men, British, late 20s, found in a third rate AirBnB on the outskirts of Oslo. A sordid affair of drugs, kink, horror, rot. The story briefly tittilated the lesser minds then fizzled out amongst the usual onslaught of celebrity gossip and the comings and goings of the royals.

The more important, frightened rumblings wouldn't begin for some months. Words were weaving themselves into public parlance, whispered and disbelieved.

"Beacon"  
"Tversky"

Nothing now seemed certain.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

**Paxton & Gray**  
**Personal Security**  
**"Hush, and be mute, or else our spell is marr'd"**

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Danny's room of mirrors and lights is partly inspired by Yayoi Kusama's Mirror Room http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/kusama-and-infinity as well as the death attic, obv.
> 
> Paxton & Gray / Scottie  
> \- Alex hires Paxton & Gray for Danny as a commonplace (if outstanding) private security firm, not realising the full extent of their services or their relation to Scottie.  
> \- As in episode 2, Danny had been oblivious to Scottie's true background. Scottie's job as the head of an unusual private security agency sure as hell better explains his amazing house in Hampstead, his collection of art and Japanese trinkets and his fancy vintage car.  
> \- Paxton & Gray, like Alex, are all about precision and probabilities. Look for clues in Chapters 3 and 4.  
> \- Correct me on this, but I don't think Scottie's surname in the show is ever revealed. God, I hope I don't have that wrong. If I'm right, his surname is most likely "Gray", common enough for Danny not to associate with him when he gets the card at Inverness. Paxton was likely Scottie's partner, now dead.  
> \- Scottie's frequenting of unusual performances in the show inspired the idea of an agency whose employees have theatrical / magical skills.  
> \- Under different circumstances, a merging of Danny and Alex would be the ideal P&G employee. Chaos and control.  
> \- Blue is the signature colour of Paxton & Gray. 'Only blue could save him...."  
> \- At the end, Scottie's expected "poetical" answer is, of course, "Because we will not live in Fear"  
> \- Paxton & Gray's non-departemental card cites William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Scottie as Prospero, taking revenge for his persecution by starting his magical agency? Maybe? Who knows.  
> \- Even a powerful, mysterious Scottie is still a bit pine-y and bitchy about Danny. Who can blame him?
> 
> The Magician  
> \- The Magician pays tribute to her boss' love of Japanese / Oriental art with her dress in "Deep Blue"  
> \- Does she really need Alex and Danny's, ahem, DNA to complete her "tricks"? Or is it just a very odd reunion gift? You decide.
> 
> Claire  
> \- In my pseudo-canon, Claire doesn't know Scottie.  
> \- Alex sends Claire to Inverness because he wants someone to look after Danny emotionally at the start of his troubling adventure. Alex understands Danny just as Danny understands Alex. Claire acts as Danny's and Alex's common mum, both their real parents having been so shit. Poor Claire. She must miss them so much. At least she has the bonsai tree.  
> Joe  
> \- Whether Joe told the truth about Alex cheating remains unclear. Alex's words to Danny could be referring to his other lies. Up to you.  
> \- I do think Joe was deliberately limiting Danny's and Alex's contact. Chat? Come on. Alex probably already knew something wasn't right but it was Danny's intuition that tipped him over the edge and made him take the risky trip to Oslo.  
> \- We all know who Joe is meant to represent - right?
> 
> Oslo crew  
> \- Poor Oslo crew. What did happen to them after Joe?
> 
> "Tversky"  
> \- I'm open to ideas about what it is but the point was to have it be the complete antithesis to the silly lying algorithm. Don't write about something you're not equipped to tackle.  
> \- Alex, of course, does make that meeting with Beacon before making his way to Oslo and "Tversky" is leaked.
> 
> Alex and Danny  
> \- With Alex gone, several people help safeguard Danny's emotional state: Sara makes sure Danny knows Alex loves him, Clare is critical in revealing the paranoid depths of that love and Micah reunites them. And then there's the Magician. She makes sure they fuck.


End file.
